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Originally posted by AMD Guy My kids once asked me if I believed in God and I told them that personally I did not, however I was not going to teach them that God is non-existant. I told them that when the time is right they will make that decision for themselves, because one's belief in God MUST be a personal connection or it is not a belief at all.

I told them that my decision or lack of belief was just the conclusion that I had come to so far in my life.

On another note, who here of the religious community has entertained the thought that God may be female? Is it a cirtainty (as much as is possible) that God in indeed a male figure? Or is God a more developed being that has no sex? (Hey! Stop thinking like that - you know what I mean)

Also- WIll the presence of Life on other worlds (If we ever discover this or prove this) challenge Man's belief in God? I remember in the movie Contact they showed all of the religious kooks coming out of the woodwork to stop the machine that they were building to contact the inhabitants of the other worlds.

Why would this be a challenge to conventional belief in God or was this just a contrivance of this particular movie?

Keep the ideas moving!

I think that if they find life on a different planet it would support more so the existance of God. Maybe heaven is a physical place? Another world in the Universe? Just a small step through the worm hole. Maybe a spirit is confined to a planet suchg as earth? Maybe they cannot moved through the void of space? Apparently some folks believe that the human soul weighs 21 grams.

There was a strange experiment by a doctor in Massachusetts back in 1907 that suggests something, indeed, leaves the body at the moment of death. And that something weighs about 21 grams.

It seems that Dr. Duncan MacDougall of Haverhill conducted his experiment with the help of six dying patients placed in a specially designed bed. The bed was built on a scale so that they could be weighed before, during and immediately after death.

Writing in a journal of American Medicine, Dr. MacDougall told of one patient who was dying of tuberculosis. He wrote: "He lost weight slowly at the rate of one ounce per hour due to evaporation of moisture in respiration and evaporation of sweat. At the end of the three hours and forty minutes, he expired and suddenly coincident with death the beam end (of the scale) dropped with an audible stroke . . . "

He said the loss was about three-fourths of an ounce, or just over 21 grams.

MacDougall conducted similar tests during the deaths of other patients over the years and got similar results. He noted that the entire bed was weighed so that any loss of fluids from urine or the bowels at the moment of death would still be weighed because the material would remain on the bed.

The doctor even considered loss of left-over air in the lungs. To test the possible weight of air in the lungs, he said he and another person each got on the bed and strenuously inhaled and exhaled. Their efforts made no change on the scale.

As a further part of his experiments, Dr. MacDougall wrote that he tried the same experiment with 15 dogs. He said he had to drug the animals to keep them from struggling, which suggests that he also used drugs to kill them. He wrote that there was no change in the weight of the bodies of the dogs at the moment of their death.

The experiments suggest then, that the soul has substance and a measurable mass. It also suggests that humans have something that animals do not, and that it leaves the body at the moment we die.

If a soul has mass then there may be a link between it and the Earth in which the soul cannot leave Earth also without help but maybe not.

I had a dream once after a strong over dose that I left my body and traveled pass the moon past some stars then all of a sudden in the bathroom the whole cabinet on the wall came crashing down and the 2 large mirror doors broke into a thousand pieces. It awoke me from slumber whatever you want to call it. That was a weird coincidence.

It is possible to leave the body at the moment you fall asleep called astral projection which does happen to some people, others can do it at will with proper training and maybe travel the cosmos. There has been a quite few instances of traveling to another part of the earth and bring back the info you saw.

But this isn't the same as having an out of body experience or obe cause you may not come back, I did die last year had no experience then came back ****ing air and feeling a heightened sense of euphoria enough to ask the nurse if she gave me drugs which she said no besides asking me alot of questions at to whether I was religious, prayed, go to church etc., I gathered she was more religious and had a rough day in the er with a couple of coronaries and then I came along and capped off an unusual day for her, leave it to me huh.

Originally posted by rangeral It is possible to leave the body at the moment you fall asleep called astral projection which does happen to some people, others can do it at will with proper training and maybe travel the cosmos. There has been a quite few instances of traveling to another part of the earth and bring back the info you saw.

But this isn't the same as having an out of body experience or obe cause you may not come back, I did die last year had no experience then came back ****ing air and feeling a heightened sense of euphoria enough to ask the nurse if she gave me drugs which she said no besides asking me alot of questions at to whether I was religious, prayed, go to church etc., I gathered she was more religious and had a rough day in the er with a couple of coronaries and then I came along and capped off an unusual day for her, leave it to me huh.

If this is true what would happen if the person went to a black inside the event horizon.

I too had an experience similer to what Rangeral talked of. An astral projection. It only happened once and when I was a lot younger. It was a strange feeling of being very light or weightless and just drifting around. There is a somewhat famous actress that talks of this frequently.